Minnie Flynn/Chapter 13
MINNIE was unashamed of her infatuation for Gilbert Carlton. What if he were married? Hadn't she made a stupid mistake herself? Gilbert explained how he had been drawn into a veritable net with a girl he didn't love. Trapped—that is what had happened.
But Minnie wasn't entirely blind to his faults. She often chafed under his domineering manner and was frightened by his nasty suspicions. But when he held her in his arms, her heart lifted again—she felt a passionate contentment, as if she were lying in a hammock under swaying, whispering birch trees, the warm moist kiss of summer upon her half-open mouth.
The rumor of Minnie's infatuation reaching Beauregard, he came spying around the studio. There he saw Minnie's eager hands always seeking Carlton's, the pressing, pleading look in her eyes, and Carlton's arrogant triumph. He knew then that he had been blocked, outwitted, but he was in no position to protest. Minnie was the first of his personal enthusiasms to bring remuneration. Her promised success would yield him a harvest, and a reflected glory in which he would bask. He hated her now that he had lost her, but he would go on hiding his hatred, and make her success pay for his wounded vanity. There were others. There are always others. Every day Alicia Adams, little blond, with yellow magnetic eyes, walked past him and said, "Good morning," an inviting tone in her voice. Her figure was more voluptuous than Minnie's, her mouth more certain to respond. When she smiled she showed her little white pointed teeth. The day Beauregard was certain that he had lost Minnie, he sent for Alicia. An hour later he opened a bottle of wine in his office, and Walter, the photographer, took a flashlight of her signing a contract. That evening, pink with triumph, she rode home in Beauregard's limousine. A week of shopping. Alicia bought the same things Minnie had bought: a gold mesh bag, a bird of paradise, a coat with an ermine collar. She and Minnie had dreamed of ermine coats. She wondered if she would get hers before Minnie. She laughed softly to herself; Minnie was fool enough to work for it.
Each succeeding picture that Minnie made brought fresh acclaims. Now the critics, attracted by her beauty, her apparent facility at expressing emotions, began to lament the type of story she was playing in; and the interested public, aroused by the criticisms, also voiced a protest. These protests reached her through fan letters, published letters in the trade journals, and in those columns of the newspapers devoted to the picture industry. Their complaint was that June Day wasn't given vehicles worthy of her. They wanted her no longer as the inexperienced child-actress, she had proven herself an emotional actress of great power, depth and feeling. When Minnie read these criticisms, she went to Beauregard, and growing resentment against Deane was the result of these conferences. It was he who had held Minnie down to inferior rôles. It was he who had insisted that she play the simple, wistful characters, when it was obvious, even to the public, that she was capable of any far-flung range of emotion.
"Good Heavens!" Minnie cried, her anger pyramiding every time she thought of it, "do you realize, Beauregard, that I haven't been given a chance,—a real chance to show what I can do? Why, look at this, what it says about me—an editorial, too—'June Day, cramped into rôles of tenement girls, chorus girls, farmers' daughters, when she is worthy of a Juliet, a Leah Kleschna or a Magdalene!'"
Beauregard motioned for Mrs. Lowell to take Alicia into the outer office for the continuation of her lesson in grammar, because he didn't want Alicia to hear him knock Deane. His plans were for Deane to take Alicia, so she mustn't be preju diced. When he and Minnie were alone, he began:
"You know, June, I wanted to give you the best, and Deane looked like the only one who could put you over."
Minnie agreed that he had succeeded and that she owed much to Deane, but in the future she wanted a director who wasn't so determined against her playing the big, dramatic rôles. "Romeo and Juliet"—that's what she wanted to do. She had never heard of it until Carlton had told her all about it. A wonderful story for the two of them. He brought her Lamb's "Romeo and Juliet." Minnie never knew it wasn't Shakespeare's. She was sincere when she told an interviewer, "I just love Shakespeare, and I hope to play him some day. He's really one man in a thousand!" She tried to feel Deane out. When she suggested herself as Juliet he smiled, his enigmatic smile, and his eyes were full of pity for her.
"Minnie," he said. "Now that you're out of my hands, don't make any false moves. As much as it hurts your vanity, keep my advice in the back of your head—you'll need it. Don't sell yourself the idea that you're a great actress, because you're not! You're young, and pretty, and an instinctive mimic. You have a cute little personality. You've learned your bag of tricks, and the public likes them. They may criticize you and appear eager to see you step into broader fields, as they blindly express it, but they will be the first to condemn you when you fail to hold your own with the more experienced actresses."
Deane evidently made this clear to Beauregard, because he called off the production for "Romeo and Juliet" even after some money had been spent on the building of sets and the designing of costumes. Minnie, urged on by Carlton, stormed into Beauregard's office when it was whispered about that Beauregard had changed his mind. Her tears and threats left him unmoved. Bacon, eager to direct the production, came to Minnie's aid, using his weapons of defense more cleverly than she, having made it clear to Beauregard that it was time Beauregard's name was again linked with Art, and there was no Art so everlasting as Shakespeare.
Beauregard asked for two days to think it over before he made any definite decision. In those two days much occurred. Another crisis in Minnie's life, this time brought about so unexpectedly by Pete.
The chauffeurs of the studio, sitting there in the long, idle hours, gossiped their hatred or their liking for their employers. One afternoon, the President of the Ætna Film Corporation came for a conference with Beauregard. His chauffeur, wagging his narrow head knowingly, told the other chauffeurs what mission his boss had come on: it was to borrow June Day for a big melodrama they were going to make at the Ætna Studio.
Pete listened, apparently dully, but attentively. He bought the chauffeur a cigar. He told him he was Day's driver, and that she was one little peach. The chauffeur agreed with him, though he had only seen her on the screen. It was quite evident Pete didn't know how much in demand his employer was, and the chauffeur was pleased to tell him all about it. He had overheard a conversation between the manager of the studio and his boss—it was just before they had left for Fort Lee. Morton (that was the manager of the Ætna Studio) had said to John Wright (his boss, and the President), "Offer Beauregard five hundred a week, if necessary, to get June Day."
Pete's big moment had come. The Flynn family were invited to Minnie's apartment that evening for dinner. Elsie had cooked the dinner, though Pete, strolling into the kitchen, had whispered mysteriously, "About the last dinner you'll have to cook, honey. I guess me and you ain't gonna be treated like servants in this outfit any longer. I've got something up my sleeve, I have. You wait and see—you wait!"
Pete was chafing with the news, but he waited until dinner was over and they had all strolled into the den. Michael Flynn, Mrs. Flynn, Nettie, Jimmy, Elsie, and Minnie. He rose, trembling slightly, and addressed them with the formality of a candidate making a political speech. This was his plan: to have some cards printed, to call upon the President of the Ætna Film Company, as Minnie's business representative, and to discuss Minnie's future plans. Minnie had her doubts, but her hinted protests were drowned by the outcries of Mrs. Flynn and Elsie. It was quite evident that Beauregard had turned down Ætna's proposition of hiring Minnie for a picture at twice the salary she was getting. So why should Minnie consider a dirty old dog like him? That's what Pete wanted to know. His mother's voice and Elsie's, like echoes in the hollow of a mountain, reiterated his own words. Then Jimmy and Nettie joined in. Minnie had said that she would buy herself an ermine coat on the instalment plan when she got more money, and Nettie knew the evening coat with the ermine collar would then fall to her. Minnie had also said she would some day buy a roadster, so Jimmy saw himself at the wheel of a smart yellow Stutz.
Always that flapping sound of Michael Flynn's helpless hands beating together. The talk of so much money, so much spending of money, always frightened him. He stood in the center of that flushed, excited, loud-talking group and turned round and round, as if he were caught in a trap.
The following morning, Jimmy drove Minnie to the studio. Elsie and Nettie went with Pete to Gimbels. They bought Pete a black and white checked suit, a yellow and black tie, and tan shoes. He had never worn gloves: his hands in chamois gloves dangled awkwardly away from his body. He protested against the cane, but he liked the narrow-rimmed derby cocked well over his ear. Elsie, pale with an almost sickly happiness, thought that he looked like a swell drummer or a gambler. He could hold his own with any of them, she whispered to him as she clung to his arm. Her gray, stringy body in its ashen dress made her look like a long beard of moss swaying on the arm-branch of an oak.
No time to have cards engraved as Minnie had ordered, but they found a man who wrote with elaborate curlicues the name, "Mr. Pete Flynn Day." And under the name, "Business Manager for Miss June Day."
Pete thought he would have difficulty getting past the hawk-eyed sub-managers, but to his astonishment he was led at once into the President's private office. He was offered a seat and a twenty-five-cent cigar.
"I see by your card you are a relative of Miss Day's," said Wright pleasantly.
"Her brother," said Pete, "and manager. Now, look here, Wright, let's me and you get down to business and put all the cards on the table. What do you say, old man?"
"That's the way I do business, Mr. Day." Wright held his hand before his face under the pretext of lighting a cigarette. He was always amused by ignorance, and stepping from the banking business into the picture business, his sense of humor was always well kindled.
Pete was talking pompously now, loud-voiced as if Wright were deaf, or a foreigner. "Through some leak at the studio my sister got wind of your offer to Beauregard. Five hundred per—am I right? Speak up! The cards are on the table, ain't they?"
"Yes, we offered Beauregard five hundred dollars a week for a period of six weeks."
"And like fun you got her!"
"Beauregard said they were about to start a production and he couldn't loan her at this time. He thought perhaps in the fall"
"He did, did he! Well, a fat chance he's got to loan her any fall! Her contract's up in four months. Do you get me, Wright? Cards on the table! Ain't gonna hold out anything on each other, are we?"
"In that case," mused Wright, "we're interested. The fact is, Day, we were given to understand that Beauregard held a contract for two years more."
"Not on your sweet life, he don't! Say!" and he stretched out in the chair, "what kind of a business man do you think I am with a great little bet like June Day!"
Wright was thinking aloud: "I've seen contracts made by Beauregard's lawyer before—always some clever little catch in them." Leaning closer to Pete, "We've got a wonderful story and are planning to make a great picture. Going to spend two hundred thousand dollars on it—that gives you some idea of how much faith we have in it, doesn't it, Day?"
"Bet your sweet life!"
"We went to Beauregard because we need your sister in the star part. To be frank, it gave us quite a jolt when we couldn't get her. Look here, Day, let's go over to the Plaza for a drink and talk this over!"
Pete slapped Wright on the back as they walked to the elevator. He, Pete Flynn, was going to have a drink with the President of the Ætna Film Corporation at the Plaza Hotel. Then he stopped short.
"How far is the Plaza?" he asked with warning premonition.
"About four blocks. Make it in two minutes in my car."
Pete knew the chauffeur would recognize him. The cat would be out of the bag. "No! Let's walk. I need a bracer! Been cooped up in the office all morning talking big biz with the World Film Company. I tell you they're all after that kid."
Pete had never tasted good Scotch. It loosened his tongue as if it had been pried from its moorings. He told Wright Minnie was so dissatisfied she would be glad to break her contract.
The following morning, Pete and Wright took the contract to Wright's lawyer. The lawyer studied it and found several loopholes of escape for Beauregard had Minnie disappointed him, and a possible loophole of escape for her. There were several clauses which hadn't been lived up to in the letter of the law. If Pete wanted to engage a lawyer, they recommended Lew Benz, a shrewd ferret who specialized in the business of breaking just such contracts. Minnie, furious because Beauregard had finally decided to cancel the production of "Romeo and Juliet," told Pete to make the first grandstand play. Its thunderbolt threw Beauregard into a panic!
For three weeks Minnie stayed away from the studio, and paid many surreptitious visits to Wright's office.
Pete was magnificent. He engaged a colored chauffeur to drive Minnie's car and sat in the back seat giving loud orders and making many trips from one studio to the other. Amusing items about him appeared in the newspapers. Their sting of ridicule was lost to everyone in the Flynn family except Minnie. Growth. The chrysalis of mental development. A subconscious struggle to grope her way out of the darkness. Why were their grasping hands always tugging at her, to hold her back? Yet each tentacle was sucking her to the body of her family: her love for her father and Jimmy; a sense of obligation to her mother (a contempt and yet sympathy for her perpetual martyrdom); Elsie's adaptability to the management of the house, though Elsie no longer accepted the position of servant; Nettie's whining gratitude; and now, unexpectedly, Pete had proven of real service.
The lawyer of the Ætna Corporation found a clause in Minnie's contract with Beauregard which made it possible for her to be free from him—free—and five hundred dollars a week! Minnie was dazed. Twice as much to spend. She could live twice as well. Dress twice as extravagantly. Buy the ermine coat and pay the first instalment on the roadster. Carlton had no car—they decided it was foolish of him to buy one when they were together all the time, but he could be of great help to Minnie by driving hers. Then, during the early autumn, she could turn in the touring car and get a closed car. A girl in Minnie's position should own her own limousine. It was expected of her. Carlton told her she would attract the attention of all the producers if she showed a little more "class." They wouldn't have the nerve to offer her only five hundred a week if she drove up in her own limousine and wore a long mink coat. An ermine coat! a mink coat! a limousine! When she was working down in the basement of a department store, if she could have dreamed then of her success and all that money—five hundred dollars a week!
Beauregard was beside himself when Pete ("Special Representative and General Manager" on the engraved cards now) put his feet up on the mahogany desk and told him that Minnie was through.
Minnie and Carlton, in the parlor of Minnie's Riverside Drive apartment, were reading the story of the first picture that she was to make for the Ætna Corporation. Minnie was leaning back on the satin-cushioned divan in a silk and lace negligée, smoking a cigarette. She disliked cigarettes—they were biting to her tongue, and she didn't know how to smoke them—but she felt backward and stupid when all the smart actresses said it was the "chic" thing to do. Carlton had bought her a long delicate cigarette holder. All ladies smoked cigarettes. She didn't want to look unsophisticated, so she tried to imitate their obvious languor. To achieve this she kept her eyes always half closed and drew down the corners of her mouth. This gave a slight sneer to her expression, though Minnie thought it a disdainful, bored look, which added charm to her in the eyes of a man of the world like Carlton. Minnie rang for the butler. A rippling, warm, delightful laughter inside. To have a Japanese butler in a crisp white jacket bow low and inquire what madam wished! Saki knew. He had long been employed by the parvenu. He was unctuous to a degree.
"A Scotch highball!" Scotch was the smart thing to drink in the afternoons, with men. Some day she would serve tea when she found out how it was done. Perhaps Saki knew. She would try him out when they were alone. Did the hostess pass the tea, or pour it? Exactly what were the duties of a hostess? Minnie wondered if she would ever give a tea, or a grand dinner party where they had several courses of food and finger bowls.
Carlton was such a gentleman that he could drink nothing but Scotch. He was nice enough to order several cases for her, paying for the first one in spite of her protests. Minnie drank the whisky, but she thought it was dreadful. Sometimes Saki brought her ginger ale, but only she and Saki knew. She would have been mortified had Carlton found it out.
Carlton was sipping the Scotch and reading the manuscript aloud. Minnie was listening more to his voice than to the story. It seemed dull and long-drawn out, exactly the kind of thing she had been playing in at the Elite Studio. Not even a remote chance of wearing pretty clothes, or being really dramatic. And as for the hero's rôle, he scarcely figured. He was only the love interest lurking in the background. Before the story was finished, Carlton threw the manuscript aside with an ugly gesture.
"A mess of tripe!" he said. "Put it in the fire and forget it. You're an actress! You've got to make them all realize it! Trying to sell you this kind of trash when you're worthy of 'Romeo and Juliet.' Think of it, sweetheart! You and I in the tomb scene! You lying there all covered up with a pall of white net and lilies. And look, darling!" He seized his cane, parrying at the blue satin kidney couch. "Sword play—believe me, I can swing a nasty sword!" His graceful body was darting in and out among the upholstered chairs. "Two of us in the tomb—the other guy a dub compared to me."
"Oh, Gilbert, you're wonderful! Hold that pose a moment, won't you, darling? The way your muscles stick out under the thin sleeve. You're right, dear, you'd be marvelous in tights, simply marvelous! Kiss me, sweetheart!"
He kissed her eagerly, cupping his mouth over hers tensely. Then he sprang away from her with a cry, "I've got it! A whale of an idea!"
"Well, what is it?" she asked, pouting a little.
"You don't like this story, and you're not going to do it!" he decided, dropping to the floor at her feet, resting his chin on her knee as he looked up eagerly into her face. "You're going right over now and see Beauregard. You're going to tell him that you'll go back to him if he'll let you make 'Romeo and Juliet.'"
"But five hundred dollars a week, Gilbert? . . ."
He interrupted her. "Of course you're going to get it, but out of Beauregard. He's put thousands of dollars into advertising you. He isn't going to lose you now if he can help it. I know that sly old fox. He won't let you go. He'll pay you the money. See if he won't. What's more, he'll make 'Romeo and Juliet.'"
While Minnie and Gilbert were on their way to Fort Lee, Pete was sweating Beauregard into giving Minnie seven hundred and fifty dollars a week, if she refused to make the story for the Ætna Productions and came back to him. Pete was drunk with triumph when he reeled out of Beauregard's office, ran to where the car was waiting for him, and ordered the chauffeur to drive back to New York. The cars, traveling at high speed, passed each other. But Pete, staring straight ahead, was working out a twisting scheme whereby Minnie was to pay him a salary worthy of his service to her. A hundred dollars a week! No! A hundred and fifty a week—that's what he'd demand from her. Seven hundred and fifty dollars per! And he was the one responsible for getting it.
When Minnie came into Beauregard's office, he knew that she was not aware of Pete's visit. Before she left she signed a contract agreeing to make one more production for him. "Romeo and Juliet," and, under sly protest, he was to pay her five hundred dollars a week.
When Pete heard this he was like a wild animal which spends its anger upon the bars of its cage. She had taken two hundred and fifty a week less than he could have gotten for her. How that two hundred and fifty a week magnified when they realized just how much they could have bought with it—two hundred and fifty dollars a week for seven weeks! Minnie hysterically cried out her loss—one thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars! That would have paid for the ermine coat. Pete, furious, snarled at her and twitted her for her stupidity in not letting him manage her affairs. Helpless now, Minnie was willing to pay him one hundred and fifty dollars a week. This was her first quarrel with Carlton. He would have managed her and taken nothing for it. But no, she would rather have her dirty, ignorant brother.
Two days later, Pete and Elsie moved into their own apartment. Elsie in a red plush dress and a picture hat with a large willow plume on it was hideous. From her thin wrists dangled eighty clumsy bracelets, set in rhinestones and varicolored synthetics.
Minnie's contract did not specify a starting date, and it was three weeks and a half before the production of "Romeo and Juliet" began. With no money coming in for that period, and already heavily in debt, Minnie felt the first steel jaw of a trap sprung upon her. They knew nothing of the Finance Companies who would lend money on contracts. Again it was her father to whom she explained her desperate situation. She assured him it would soon be over. Five hundred dollars a week! They would be on their feet in no time. Carlton would be glad to let her have it if she asked him for it, but she didn't want to let him know how improvident she had been. Carlton was above them in many ways. His looks, his manners. She loved him! To talk money and debts to him would be cheap and unromantic. Would her father lend her what he had laid aside? There was the old nest egg, the funeral money, and there was one hundred dollars that Minnie had given him for Christmas—and twenty dollars for his birthday. She knew that those bills, folded with the others, were nestling in the toe of the old woolen sock.
To her surprise she found that her father had three hundred dollars. Most of it was money she had given him. A dollar here, five there, generously pressed into his hand at vivid peaks of happiness.
During these four weeks of preparation for "Romeo and Juliet," she saw little of Carlton. He was busy with fencing masters, costumers, wig-makers. Many an evening he spent at Bacon's home rehearsing. He found it necessary to go on a diet. Twice a week he had his face massaged, and a mask of mud to erase the lines under his eyes, the sagging droop to his mouth. This was to be his great opportunity, and he must make the most of it. In the dreaming and planning for it, he forgot about Minnie. He saw her once in her unbecoming costume. The "Juliet" he had visualized was fair and quite tall. It took height to carry those costumes. Minnie looked short and dumpy in them. When they decided that she was to wear a blond wig, she was delighted, but though it was silver and silken, the edges of it around her face were hard and gave a squat, low look to her forehead. She soon lost what little grace she had acquired. Her gestures became stilted and unnatural. The springing step was gone from her walk in an effort to glide along, swanlike, in the heavy silken, velvet robes.
Bacon groaned. "Gad, Carlton, you're going to be immense in the part! Nothing like these Romeo costumes to show off a man's figure. But, damn it, it takes a great actress to play Juliet! Grace and youth . . . the ability to carry herself. There never was a Juliet born on Ninth Avenue and never will be."
Carlton was embarrassed. "You've got to do a little work with her, Bacon. She'll probably get it across. They might criticize her in the big cities, but the hicks will never know the difference. And don't, for Heaven's sake, let her suspect that you're not pleased with her! She's getting sensitive. If she thinks you haven't any faith in her, it might break her spirit." Carlton was worried for fear that Minnie's discouragement would result in her throwing aside the vehicle and refusing to go on. He saw his future—his career—stretched out before him once he had made a success of "Romeo."